Re: Idea for the validators

"Jukka K. Korpela" wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Philip TAYLOR [PC336/H-XP] wrote:
> 
> > I agree
> > with Eric that the seal-of-approval is no bad thing
> > in itself
> 
> So now "Valid HTML!" is a seal of approval? By whom or by which
> organization? I thought the W3C does _not_ regard the icon as an approval
> by the W3C in any sense.

Well, perhaps they need to come up with a new icon then. You're right
that any mention of something technical like "HTML" may confuse users.
How about just "W3C seal of approval"? It wouldn't be hard to make a
button saying that (or something similar). Or even just "W3C approved" -
that's no different from the seals you find on other products.


> > As to the contents of that page,
> > it might start somewhat along the following lines :
> 
> I'm afraid your proposal just confirms what I have said: it is impossible
> to write a description of validation that would be understandable to the
> general public, and it would mostly be worse than useless if it were
> possible.
> 
> Please sit back and imagine that you are an ordinary Web surfer who
> just happened to click on an icon out of curiosity - this should be taken
> as the typical case. If this is difficult, ask someone (who is not
> authoring Web pages) do the exercise of reading the text.

Well, I agree Philip's draft had some shortcomings, just as I am sure my
rough one in my first email did.
But I am confident you can get the message across without ever
mentioning the word 'tag' or 'html'. I mean, it doesn't really need to
say very much really. That's the beauty of the web - it can provide
links to more detailed pages for curious people who wish to (gradually)
learn more about the topic.

I would have thought it would suffice to say something like:


The page you just came from conforms to current technical standards for
webpages. An automated test was run before this text was displayed to
confirm this.

Webauthors are allowed to place a 'W3 approved' link (such as the one
you clicked to get here) on their pages if they meet all the
requirements of the standards. Unfortunately many webpages do NOT adhere
to the standards which can lead to various technical problems (such as
not displaying properly in web-browsers).

The idea of the 'W3C approved' link is to promote awareness amongst the
surfing public of these standards and why they are essential to the web.

Links:

* Who sets the standards?
* What kind of problems can non-conforming sites cause?
* Why don't many sites conform
[...and so on, you get the idea ]

You may return to the page you came from by using your browsers back
button!



I don't think (I *hope*) that wouldn't confuse people. :)

	-James


-- 

 personal: http://cirrus.twiddles.com/
     work: http://www.twiddles.com/ (professional webdesign)

Received on Wednesday, 30 July 2003 04:20:42 UTC